Why expert exchange

Participate with other like-minded professionals from around the world on tech topics and problems that matter most to you. Become an Expert. Experts Exchange gives you an outlet to showcase your skills and knowledge. Uncover great satisfaction when you help another community member solve a problem and further your own knowledge by exploring related topics and collaborating with other members.

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The asker designates the comments that solved the problem as well as those that led to a solution. The asker may also award bonus points to the user s who helped the most. Users can earn:. You can find all open questions on the Answer Open Questions page. Follow more topics in order to better customize your feed. This will publish questions, articles, and other content relevant to topics of interest higher in your homepage feed. Get expert alerts when you create a saved search.

Saved searches notify you when new, related results go live on the site. Follow these steps to create an expert alert:. Before you answer a question, follow these Answer Guidelines on how to provide helpful answers. Our Hall of Fame members have found that the way they answer a question matters just as much as the information they provide. Outline answers with insight gathered from your personal expertise and mention whether your tips have been tried, tested, or are proven to work.

When members write articles, points are awarded based on the quality of the article. Once the article is submitted, there are three status levels you can achieve: Accepted, Approved, Awarded. Additionally, the user can earn more points after the article has been submitted. Before you begin, follow these Article Guidelines for tips on making a comprehensive article that will help educate other members—and also earn you points.

In this stage of the process, Experts Exchange editors review your article. If they accept and publish it, it will be live and accessible within the community. Your article reaches the Approved status and earns you an extra 3, points—when it gains either Community Pick accolades or Editor's Choice. When you make a video with your expertise, points are awarded based on the quality of the video.

Once the video is submitted, there are three steps: Accepted, Approved, Awarded. Additionally, the user can earn more points after the video has been submitted. The breakdown is as follows:. Before you begin, follow these Video Guidelines for tips on creating a comprehensive video that will help educate other members—and also earn you points. In this stage of the process, Experts Exchange editors review your video. Your video reaches the Approved status and earns you an extra 3, points—when it gains either Community Pick accolades or Editor's Choice.

The more points you earn, the higher your level of certification on site. There are two award systems: Levels and Certifications. The more points you earn, the higher your level and rank in the community. Your Level shows your overall expertise, regardless of topic. See how your level is calculated. Visit the Expert Awards page for descriptions on each participation level honored in our Annual Expert Awards, along with required qualifications for winning.

In the Hall of Fame , you will see a current list of the top certified members. Visit this resource for other ways to view top experts. Certifications are earned in specific topics. Users with a certification are considered experts in that topic. Technocrat 50M PTS.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 10 years, 5 months ago. Active 3 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 39k times. Improve this question. Adam Rackis Adam Rackis It looks like the author of that email isn't familiar with the SO concept of an "accepted answer" You mean that other question-and-answer site.

With the hyphen in the name? MartinScharrer: codinghorror. I agree with Popular Demand, it's an interesting read, but I also have to ask: Who cares? I'm also tempted to vote to close, because it is not a question, but a mere subjective discussion. I think they were actually wildly profitable before stackoverflow. If companies aren't renewing their subscriptions to EE, it would be a very painful spot to be in after being so accustomed to making so much money with very little overhead.

Maybe we as a community need to tune down the EE hating a bit - they have a business model most of us don't like, but that's why we're here and not there, right? Plus ultimately, until SE is profitable, there is no knowing for sure whether it will work out.

I have great trust that it will, mind, but until it does, I tend to have some respect for competitors who decided that they need a paywall model to pay their bills - no matter how much I think it sucks. SO's main reason for being in existence is to be better than EE, so it's not a big surprise that many people here have a low opinion of it. I blame my high school English teacher, 'different than' really sticks out at me whenever I see it : — John Ferguson. John You can take revenge. Start using "irregardless" in front of English teachers and their ilk.

I can almost guarantee they'll develop a twitch : — JCL I think that the letter was as polite and neutral as they could have made it. Clearly it misses some points and gets some wrong possibly on purpose. Adding another data point, I've been running into DCMA takedown notices lately when googling programming info. They don't always have enough details, but the ones that did were always filed by EE.

Well, not a CC kind of site. UphillLuge The DMCA takedowns relate to someone who was scraping complete content and republishing it without any attributions whatsoever. Yes, we are not a CC type of site but that sort of thing wouldn't stand in most places.

We tried to work with the guy but he refused so a DMCA was the only possible recourse. Jey - surely "bully" is a bit hyperbolic, no? They offered to give you the answer you were looking for in exchange for getting paid for their services.

I'm more happy with SO's business model than EE's, but let's not pretend that charging money in exchange for services rendered amounts to "bullying" — Adam Rackis.

It would be nice to have the ability to vote on whether to undo closing of threads by moderators, using a voting system just like the rest of the site. Show 16 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. To address some of the other stuff above: We don't hate you, nor are we spending a lot of time "talking trash" one blog post, sheesh people. Thanks, and enjoy your discussion.

Jason C. Improve this answer. Has your new customer service member been suitably briefed on his apparent misconceptions about SE? Feel free to sign up for an EE account, let it ride for a while and then cancel via email to test : — JCL Personally, I yearn for the day when I can light hundred-dollar baths with caviar. Shog9, when you figure it out please, please post video. I wanted to edit the signature out, but I don't think this is a post to make jokes on. Thank you for your response and for showing us the other side of the coin!

I understand and typically I wouldn't have posted it since I know you guys don't like it, just like we don't like at EE but we felt that leaving it in there is helpful since this is somewhat of an "official" response.

Wasn't saying you specifically : Just noting that there is a crowd that seems to equate "paid" with "evil" and we don't think that's healthy dialog in the short or long run.

And as Pekka says on his comment on the question, there is a lot more 'trash talk' here. We need to grow up on that point, and your calm response will help.

Thanks for taking the time to post. I've never been able to understand that. Somehow knowledge of software development seems to make people behave silly when it comes to basic economics. It's always the platform. Bill, fair point. But when the hate is directed at the platform, the people who are heavily invested and involved from the community can't help but take it personally, to say nothing of the employees.

If we used similar language to describe SO the software, I can only imagine a similar feeling and response from YOUR community and the employees. That's what drove me to SO. I understand you got to make a buck, but is there any other way to make it a little less frustrating? Yes, a couple. You just have scroll a long way down to get to it. There's more, but I'm not authorized to be public with it yet, but changes are coming.

Mark Or you just scroll down past that stuff and see the answers. Not hard. Show 14 more comments. As Experts-Exchange's resident historian, I'd like to put our story in context, introduce some of the human beings referenced, and put things in an accurate sequence: Experts Exchange was developed in by Clint Staley, a California Polytechnic State University , computer science professor in San Luis Obispo , California, along with his former student, Matt Wormley who went on to author the editable type tools used in Adobe Photoshop as a departmental pet project.

Community Bot 1. If SE ever blocks free access to the content, anyone can host it elsewhere. Pulling EE-like shenanigans is not practical in SE. Changeling You're attributing things that just aren't there. We understand you just fine. Your model is working and we respect it. The "if went from free to paid" was an attempt to illustrate something, not a prediction of what you have to do survive. EE made the choices it did based on its situation at the time.

We have a different business model. You don't have to like it and obviously most of you don't : but it does work for us and hardly qualifies as "shenanigans". Lots of things can happen in 15 years JCL I welcome the beverages : However, I was simply responding to the hypothetical point mbarbir made and your response by stating that the data is open source so what he said wouldn't happen because the data is propagated already.

I'm still baffled at the outrage techies express at things online not being free. People lost their sh! EE is great. You all helped me immensely when I was a newb in , and for a monthly cost just over what I pay for lunch at Panera on any given day. That SO does a better job at the same thing no offense , for free, and in a way that's fun speaks to how incredible SO's creators are, not how evil EE is.

Get a grip everyone. Who is making the argument that paid equals evil? It's the scammy Google shenanigans that made me stop following EE links. Nothing more. It wasn't the "not free" the bothered a lot of us -- it's the teasing result in a google search that ultimately leads or at least used to lead nowhere.

That really pissed a lot of people off. But what SE is unlikely to do is obscure answers or stuff three printed pages worth of ads between the question and the answers. Oh, the editing and formatting features are much nicer at SE, too, though that's a matter of opinion. Joel Well, it should work correctly now. Coming from Google or Bing, you just have to scroll down to see what you wanted to see. I can't unpiss people off based on past actions but I can apologize for it if it would help.

Formatting appears more or less the same to me. An argument can be made for allowing for editing at EE just as an argument can be made for not allowing it. But we can agree to disagree on these : — JCL JCL - It works coming from Google - unless you middle click to open search results in a new tab, to quickly try several links at once. EE is sometimes broken in that scenario.

I made it up to Wizard rank in one topic and Guru in a couple others at one time on EE still have some ugly t-shirts to prove it ; - seriously, move the design from the back to the front and leave the back empty.

JCL How is my statement in any way confusing? I never said EE was evil. Nobody here is making the "paid equals evil" argument. It's a straw man. It's interesting to me hearing other people's perspectives. When I used to find Google results with the precise EE question I was looking for, I guess it just kind of made sense that I would have to pay to access their content, which I didn't seem to be able to find elsewhere.

It's interesting to me that some people consider that evil. I was getting paid for doing what I was doing, I guess I never thought twice about paying EE for what they were doing. Having questions show up on Google just seemed like common-sense advertising to me; how else could they get their content out? Adam: Once again, no one here is making the argument that getting paid is evil. Google doesn't index content that's behind a paywall.

In order to get their pages indexed, EE let's you see their answers if the referrer is Google, but they still display a banner saying that you have to sign up to see the answers. They also display one version of the answers that are obscured above one clear text version, so if you don't scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, you might not know that the answer is there.

It's basically a scam to get around Google's no index policy. JCL It's quite alright. Spirited discourse is always welcome. Also and on a completely unrelated topic , "WhackAMod" Damn, I wish I'd thought of that. I don't find anything wrong with people charging for their products — Ben.

Show 22 more comments. This option is in your profile on the prefs tab. Bill the Lizard Bill the Lizard k 59 59 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Definitely recent—I got it this morning. This all came up ages ago when they had that blog post about how SO will run out of money and EE will reign supreme. People took the time to carefully explain everything to them, particularly how accepted answers work.

Apparently they just ignored it — Michael Mrozek. EE sends emails if so told immediately there are comments on an answer. SO sends once a day. At least until recently. I stopped ticking the email and instead reloads the SO page once in a while to see the red dot. Another huge difference between EE and StackExchange - if you dare ask a question that is deemed off topic, e.

If you ask a server related question in the programming zone at EE, some friendly soul will re-tag and re-zone it for you and that is it. I personally much prefer SO's approach - if I'm going to give away some of my time for free, I want that askers get forced to invest some amount of own effort and discipline but not necessarily money.

But if there is an functioning ecosystem that works with a more lenient approach and askers paying , that's fine. As I said in my comment above, I think the EE hating in our community is starting to get really old. It's always been Server Fault. I have no idea what this means. We vote to migrate to SF, which sounds exactly like "some friendly soul will re-tag and re-zone it for you and that is it" to me. Also, rep doesn't really matter when you're asking a question on SO or SF.

You still have full privileges to edit and leave comments as long as your account is associated which you can do post migration. Bill: Then you have been lucky. My negative experiences with closed and down-voted questions across the SE network stems from personal experience and by direct observation of non-native English questions being hammered into the ground when they with a little effort from people with a better grasp of English could be made into acceptable questions.

Call it "tough love" or whatever. It felt extremely rude at the time. Such rudeness as I have seen more than once would earn a suspension at EE. Do NOT get me wrong. I'm a moderator on SO, so believe me I've seen the worst. I do agree with you though, there's plenty of room on the internet for both EE and SE, and neither site is perfect. Add a comment. In the end, I think the Internet is the true judge of the merits of each system: Postscript: Note that even though Panda hit our site according to Alexa , our Google Analytics statistics show very little drop in stackoverflow.

Michael Pryor Michael Pryor Notice though, that even though our traffic fell in April because of Panda, our quantcast rank went UP well, down, it went closer to number 1. The sites that were better than us in the quantcast rankings got punished more I bet we would absolutely kick ass if they switched to a Unicorn algorithm. Jeff Atwood k gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Your main point is factually incorrect: According to the site owners, StackOverflow.

The venture capital was for the development and maintenance of the greater Stack Exchange network. I pointed out some factual errors, I wasn't "ripping" anyone. Besides that, my post was 7 hours before Jason pointed out that the email was from a new hire. Posts here aren't in chronological order like on some other sites.

They're not distinct companies -- just distinct websites. And I'll admit to being used to reading things in an order that is logical, if not always necessarily sensible. I don't see how these are mutually exclusive. We ARE generating revenue! Lots of it Even if you have a private profitable company like we did , you can still sell shares to outside people VCs if the price is right. Eric: SO has a slew of volunteers - US!

Every user is a volunteer. Jeff Atwood Jeff Atwood k gold badges silver badges bronze badges. I eventually started ignoring EE pages on Google altogether.